Tag Archives: Keith Whitelam

Good News: Keith Whitelam’s Book Will Be Out In the Next Few Weeks

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I’ve mentioned this before and now I’ve got a few more specific details:

whitelam_bookThe book is aimed at the general/interested reader rather than a specialist Biblical Studies market, though its author hopes that it is affordable and interesting for students. It is priced at $7.99 in the USA (the price will be converted for local currencies). Hopefully it will be available from 1 February 2013 (this will depend on different companies and how quickly they make it available on their electronic stores). It will be available on Amazon (for Kindle), Apple iBookstore (for iPad), Barnes and Noble (for Nook), Reader Store (for Sony Reader), Kobo (for Kobo Touch, Kobo Wi-Fi, Kobo Vox), Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, eBookPie, and eSentral. The ISBN for the epub version is 978-0-9575406-1-3.

Visit your local e-publisher and pick up a copy soon as you can. I’ll be reviewing it in the next few weeks, so watch for that if you like.

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An Excerpt From Keith Whitelam’s Forthcoming “Rhythms of Time: Reconnecting Palestine’s Past”

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From Chapter 2,  A Land Built of Bones

whitelam_bookThe history of Palestine has been forged in the shadow of empire: the Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian from the ancient past to the Ottoman, British and American of the modern world. The so-called great men, monarchies, and imperial powers have followed on from one another in the region, attracting most attention like the froth of the waves breaking on the shoreline. Yet underlying this surface movement, as Braudel termed it, was a substratum that moved slowly to the rhythms of time absorbing and dissipating the effect of the waves. 
It is this story, an essential part of Palestine’s past, that was ignored by western visitors and scholars in favour of the events and characters described in the Bible. So these centuries that are associated with the biblical stories have become Israel’s past and have been denied to Palestine and the Palestinians. As Carlo Levi said of Gagliano in his evocative and moving Christ Stopped at Eboli: 
 
No one has come to this land except as an enemy, a conqueror, or a visitor devoid of understanding. The seasons pass today over the toil of the peasants, just as they did three thousand years before Christ…
 
The lives of the inhabitants of the tombs of Afula, Dothan and Silwan are part of the rich tapestry of Palestine’s history as it moves to the rhythms of the land, beguiled by its attractions, and reaping its rewards in return for loving care. For those close to the land, it was ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ in that time worn phrase coined by the biblical writers. Their hopes are summed up in the words of the psalmist, ‘May there be an abundance of grain in the land; on the tops of the mountains may it wave; may its fruit be like Lebanon.’ Or more recently, Raja Shehadeh when walking in the hills near Ramallah describes the abundance of wild flowers—‘most were in miniature, blue iris only a few centimetres high, pink flax also very close to the ground and the slightly taller Maltese Cross and pyramid orchids, a colourful but thin carpet covering the vibrant land’, and the terraced gardens with olive trees and flowers’— while pondering the lives of its former inhabitants:
 
As I walked up I looked at the unterraced hill to my left.  What would it take to clear this and terrace it, I wondered. What a feat it must have been to look at the wild hill and plan the subdivisions. How did they know when to build the terrace wall in a straight line, when in a curve and when to be satisfied with a round enclave where only a single tree could be planted? They must have been very careful to follow the natural contours, memorizing the whole slope before deciding how to subdivide it…. Where once there was a steep hill there was now a series of gradually descending terraces. In this way my ancestors reclaimed the wild, possessed and domesticated it, making it their own.
 
We need to see the inhabitants of the graves of Afula, Dothan and Silwan as ourselves, or fail to understand how their hopes, aspirations and fears unite us in a common humanity. The rhythms of time are ignored in the search for that which separates, defines, and makes exclusive. Palestine is, to adapt the words of Levi, a land built on bones, where the dead are passed into the living.
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“Rhythms of Time: Reconnecting Palestine’s Past”, by Keith Whitelam

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Keith has written a new book soon to be released which will no doubt be both brilliantly written (as are all his works) and thoroughly engaging.  But first, the cover (which was produced by Keith’s daughter and I think she did an absolutely brilliant job):

whitelam_bookIn the next couple of days I’ll provide, courtesy the book’s author, the table of contents and a sample section.  For now, let this tease tease.

‘Crucify Him, Crucify Him’ – The Biblical Archaeology Review Cries for Zias’ Blood

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I wasn’t at the trial so I don’t know what Joe Zias said on the stand.  I do know two things, though and they’re brief observations:

1- BAR hasn’t gone to such lengths to crucify someone (or at least destroy their reputation) since the 90′s when Hershel Shanks showed utter contempt for Keith Whitelam, Niels Peter Lemche, and Thomas Thompson.

2- I don’t really believe BAR is reporting all the facts or all the facts fairly.  I don’t trust BAR to do so as it has shown itself more than willing in the past to skew the evidence to its own advantage.

What this hatchet job shows, though, in my estimation, is that BAR and its editorial staff are a mean-spirited, vicious gang of thugs.  But I already knew that.  I’ve known that since the 90′s.

If, however, BAR has offered the facts as they really are two more things are worth saying:

1- I have been and will remain Joe’s friend.  I’m loyal to my friends and if they happen to fall beneath the weight of human frailty I don’t care- I remain loyal to them.

and

2- I still have absolutely NO respect for BAR, for Hershel Shanks, for his editorial staff, or for those who support their money-driven archaeology, and that won’t change either unless Shanks is fired and the magazine takes on a wholly new character by adopting a more scholarly and less greedy direction (which means ending advertisements for antiquities).

Keith Whitelam’s Latest

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The following new publication from Sheffield Phoenix Press includes Sheffield contributions from Keith Whitelam on cartography and the construction of homeland and James Crossley on Enoch Powell’s idiosyncratic reconstruction of the Gospel tradition (he – Powell, that is -  doubted whether Jesus was crucified and thought he was more likely stoned to death).

Via the Sheffield Blog.